


Cradle

by fallen_woman



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-08
Updated: 2011-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-14 13:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallen_woman/pseuds/fallen_woman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ares knew, as did everyone else, the lie of the virgin goddess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cradle

Ares knew, as did everyone else, the lie of the virgin goddess. Artemis’ retinue was essentially a traveling banquet of downy arms and thick thighs, while Athena occasionally took the shape of willow-pricked scholars or poets to indulge in the same. Even that hag Hecate whetted herself on willing ghosts, with her dogs and owls watching.

The only mystery, then, was Hestia, whose faded gaze and tremulous lips made her no mystery at all, until the day Ares caught her abandoning the hearth.

She had fled from her wooden perch (he refused to call it a throne) while all the gods were at rest, dizzy and ambrosial after another of Zeus’ triumphs. Tailing her across the sky, Ares smirked as he recognized the Colline Gate of Rome; now there was a people of goodly followers, martial and obedient — those swimming beards on Olympus could keep their fussy Greeks, who for all that logic and thought, had never thought of gladiators.

Hestia did not bother to disguise herself. Ares sympathized: he hated the texture of human flesh from the inside, the sweating and leaking and smells. Only the blood was beautiful.

With a bundle at her hip, the goddess placed her hand to the paved ground, and sank through. The Campus Sceleratus, Ares realized. Of course. A Vestal, probably innocent, sentenced to die. Hestia cradling one of her own until the end.

He didn’t follow her into the underground chamber. Even he had his limits. For twenty days, he paced around the sullen columns along the field, under the heavy-lidded sky.

When Hestia emerged during the first blush of a storm, her bundle was gone. “You should have strangled her, or made her immortal,” Ares said. “Either one.”

“It was not her way,” Hestia said. The rain pasted her veil to her cheeks and wrenched the white from her dress.

“I trust your presence was of some succor?” The query had a leer in his mind, but the words came out damp. Soft.

“She broke the lamp the first day,” Hestia looked at the rain shattering on the flagstones by the gate. “She was terrified of the wait, the loneliness. And I said, ‘I am all things and nothing, first-born and last-born. You will wait a hand-span in time. I will wait forever.’”

He took her arm, just the inside of the elbow, to help her into the waiting chariot by the gate. For once, the gold-bridled horses were silent. “Was the girl comforted?”

Hestia sat down beside him, elbow still bent, knees forced together: “She lay down smiling and said no more.”

“Good,” Ares said, and his hand on Hestia’s cheek was of no consequence because he was actually touching her veil, and his thumb on her shaking lips also because of the veil, and the wetness inside her mouth was only the rain.


End file.
